As Gemma was working in A&E over summer she had no choice about when to take her holidays, but it worked out well that she got the week leading up to the Frankfurt City triathlon off. The weekend before the race was the final weekend of the Tour de France, so we decided to drive to Paris and watch the last stage of the tour, then drive across to Frankfurt, stopping off somewhere on the way. We planned to camp on the way and had just bought a bigger tent, which would make it more pleasant.
The holiday didn’t get off to a good start. We had booked onto a 3 am channel tunnel crossing but when we arrived there was a 3 hour delay due to migrant activity. When we eventually made it to France we headed straight for Paris where we were staying in the Camping Indigo Paris campsite. We were very happy with the campsite; there were lots of running routes and easy access to Paris. Before the tour arrived we spent a while walking around Paris. The weather wasn’t great and we ended up buying bright yellow ponchos to keep dry. It was a very good experience to see the riders racing around the Champs Elysees.
After Paris we headed to Camping du Muhlenbach on the border between France and Germany. The campsite was very nice and was in quite a remote area. We went for a couple of runs in the forest around the campsite and also got out on the bikes.
We visited the nearby town of Bitche and had a look round the citadel, which was very impressive. There was a very interesting video tour that went through lots of rooms within the castle and talked about the history of the place.
Finally we headed to a campsite in Offenthal, just outside Frankfurt. It was a very good location. When we went for a run on the first day we were there we found an outdoor swimming complex within 3 or 4 kms and so the next day we ran over to the pool and went for a swim, then ran back.
We went into Frankfurt to register for the triathlon on the Saturday and met up with the people from Langen who had looked after us last year. The race itself was on the Sunday, which turned out to be very hot! Gemma and me exited the swim at the same time (well Gemma sat on my feet all the way round and then ran across the mat in front of me) and quite near the front, considering we weren’t wearing wetsuits. The bike was tough, with quite a headwind on the first section, but the run was even harder as it was so hot. I was fairly happy with how it went as I still managed to run a lot faster than last year. It’s a great race and we would certainly like to go back and do it again.
After the race it was a bit of a rush to get back to the tunnel. We made it with plenty of time and although there was a short delay it went more smoothly than on the way out.
